Diary of a Saint
by Sam Monson
13/11/2009
Week 1 Back
Some of you Diner faithful may remember the Rookie Diary from a couple of years ago. That diary followed my rookie season for the DCU Saints – a team in the Irish American Football League which culminated in a one and done appearance in the playoffs.
This season begins a new season and a new diary, so I think it’s time to bring the Diner faithful up to date on what happened in the year in between.
Last season had some ups and down, and ended with another playoff appearance. As for the performance of your humble Diner reporter, much the same…some ups and downs, and naturally a list of injuries!
The Saints finished with a 3-4-1 record, good for 4th place in the league that had been left with just 7 teams after a troublesome off-season for some teams led to them folding. Our final game of the regular season was a ‘win and you’re in’ contest with the Cork Admirals, a game in which we emerged victorious with an 8-0 score line. Our playoffs ended with a defeat to the Dublin Rebels.
But it’s that time of year again, the text messages have begun, training has started back for veteran players (after 2 seasons I am now officially a veteran player!).
It’s come at a pretty good time for your humble Diner reporter health-wise. After wrecking my ankle badly last season and having various minor problems after that compensating for it I’m finally back approaching full speed and full fitness again.
This year we’ve had quite a big recruiting drive and have ended up with a pretty healthy number of rookies at training. So along with getting back into the swing of things all of the veteran players are spending some time coaching up the rookies.
There has been a pre-season college blitz arranged for a few weeks, so training is focussed on getting everybody game-ready quickly, before we go back to regular work after the blitz. This week we had some special teams drills to do.
Strangely for a new player, and ignoring a few emergency stints as a punt or kick returner, I had managed to go through 2 seasons without a single snap on special teams. After a special teams drill where I tackled the return man’s knees with my head this week, I suspect there might have been a good reason for that… That hurt a surprising amount, even through my fancy new Riddell Revolution Speed ™ Helmet with fancy gel cushioning! Textbook tackler I ain’t!
After the special teams drills receivers and QBs warmed up for a while and I actually felt unusually good catching the ball. It helped that our 2 QBs were both throwing the ball exceptionally well, firing accurate balls with perfect spirals all over the field. Our starting QB for the past couple of years, Cormac, told me later that it was the first time his shoulder had felt completely healthy in ages, and it showed.
During a break in our drills the receivers got to watch a bit of the linebacker and fullback/running back drills. Vinnie decided to step in as linebacker for a few plays. Coach and the veterans had been trying to get across the level of aggression and violence that the rookies need to play at, and Vinnie was about to demonstrate exactly what they meant. Last season Vinnie played both ways for us: defensive end and tight end. He’s tall, about 6’4, fast, and hits like a train. We’ve got him playing TE only this year, which is fantastic for the offense. Not only because he’s a great weapon to have, but also because it means we no longer get hit by him in practice!
The drill was a bit like an Oklahoma drill, where a fullback leads a running back through a hole, and the linebacker has to beat the block and make the tackle. The fullback had the right idea, went low on Vinnie, only to find himself getting folded up and crumpled before Vinnie makes the stop. I think that’s the first time I’ve seen a person get crumpled up and broken like cardboard. So much for ‘low man wins’!
Scrimmage to finish the day was when the real fun started though. Overall I caught most of what came my way. My only lapse came on a play when Scott put up a perfect pass over the corner and I went up to get it only to badly time my jump and see it slip through my fingertips. It’s one I should have had, but not the worst ball I’ve dropped, or will drop in future no doubt!
All last season the D would own the offense during scrimmage. We had one of the league’s better Defenses, and it had a nasty habit of handing the offense its ass during the end of training scrimmages. This week though the defense was made up largely of rookies, and poor old Foxy was the veteran presence trying to organise a defense of rookies. Obviously rather than sympathise I chose to use this as an opportunity to wind him up – nothing’s more fun than winding up Foxy. To help matters, he’s a Raiders fan. Ruining a perfectly good joke though, Darius Heyward-Bey now has more catches than names.
Cormac and myself managed to hook up nicely on a post route for a touchdown, and by this point Foxy was beginning to steam. A few plays later Scott playing QB, made a nice scramble to the right hand side and Foxy missed a tackle, which led to a touchdown. A bit of gentle mocking resulted in Foxy telling me to “Come across the middle and ask for a pass, then we’ll see what happens!” It wasn’t long before Scott rolled out to his left and completed a pass to me on a crossing pattern from the right hand side. Foxy at this point was most definitely not a happy bunny.
I was enjoying my successful wind-up job, perhaps a little too much, and forgot one crucial thing – Scrimmage was not over yet!
A few plays later the call came for an end around to me. I took the toss from Shane, playing in his last scrimmage before he moved to Canada, and took off for the sideline. After making some yardage I was about to skip out of bounds when an irate freight train stormed into me from the left hand side like I was a foolish OAP who had parked my rusty old Morris Minor on the train tracks. Not content with simply drilling me in the side the Foxy Express then rolled right over my prone corpse, riding his way over my head.
As I lay there my first thought was ‘what in God’s name has happened to my helmet?’ which was no longer the safety cocoon that it had been, having been ground up and around my face. I had to take the entire thing off to figure out just what the heck had happened to it, which was difficult in and of itself, since I started off trying to remove it with the gum-shield that’s tied to the facecage still in my mouth. As I write this I’m sporting a rather fetching lump on the side of my jaw from the collision. Moral of the story: If you’re going to wind up Foxy – make sure you get off the field or scrimmage is over when you make your point! Moral of the story 2: This is the IAFL – if you’re going to get out of bounds, expect the hit to come anyway! Moral of the story 3: Take the gum shield out of your mouth before you try and take your helmet off, idiot!
Still, I got my touchdown, and I made some yards on the end around before the hit, and I got to annoy Foxy for a while, so it wasn’t a total loss!
So the football year has started, rookies have been recruited, veterans are coming back, people are healthy, and the DCU Saints are looking to move past the first round of the playoffs and into contention for the IAFL Championship, the Shamrock Bowl.
Stay tuned to find out how we get on.
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